“Everybody Talks About the Weather … We Don’t! The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof”
A conversation with Professor Karin Bauer
Including a projection of artwork by political prisoners & prisoners of war, and their allies,
from the Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar
THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 6-8pm
at QPIRG Concordia
1500 de Maisonneuve Ouest, #204
(métro Guy-Concordia)
Free. Welcome to all!
Wheelchair accessible.
Snacks and drinks will be available.
Karin Bauer is chair of the Department of German Studies at McGill University. She is the editor of “Everybody Talks about the Weather: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof” about the writings of radical icon Ulrike Meinhof, exploring the rise of a radical political culture of dissent in the 1960s.
About the book “Everybody Talks about the Weather: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof” (edited and introduced by Karin Bauer):
No other figure embodies revolutionary politics and radical chic quite like Ulrike Meinhof, who formed, with Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader–Meinhof Gang, notorious for its bombings and kidnappings of the wealthy in the 1970s. But in the years leading up to her leap into the fray, Meinhof was known throughout Europe as a respected journalist, who informed and entertained her loyal readers with monthly magazine columns.
What impels someone to abandon middle-class privilege for the sake of revolution? In the 1960s, Meinhof began to see the world in increasingly stark terms: the United States was emerging as an unstoppable superpower, massacring a tiny country overseas despite increasingly popular dissent at home; and Germany appeared to be run by former Nazis. Never before translated into English, Meinhof’s writings show a woman increasingly engaged in the major political events and social currents of her time. In her introduction, Karin Bauer tells Meinhof’s mesmerizing life story and her political coming-of-age.
About the Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar:
Today’s anti-war, anti-globalisation, and anti-colonial movements are rooted in the history of earlier struggles for justice, including the mass movements of the 60s and 70s. Many of the political prisoners and prisoners of war featured in this calendar were organisers during that period: members of the Black Panther Party, or the American Indian Movement; Puerto Ricans fighting for their homeland, or white anti-racist allies working in solidarity with oppressed peoples. Some of them have been in prison SINCE THAT TIME – 35 years or more. Yet these prisoners are not relics of past movements; they are still active in their political work, and despite the hardships of organising in prison, they continue to organise for justice in the present day, justice behind bars and justice on the streets. This calendar is our tribute to them. Free all political prisoners!
Free all prisoners of war!
The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is a working group of QPIRG Concordia. Copies of the 2011 Calendar will be available for sale during this event.
This event is part of the new QPIRG Concordia Resource Library Author Series: https://qpirgconcordia.org/librarycirculation/.
Our previous event (November 17, 2010) was with Concordia Professor Julie Norman in conversation about her new book: The Second Palestinian Intifada: Civil Resistance; as well as photo projections by Montreal based photojournalisat Valerian Mazataud: Olive War in Palestine.